TOKYO, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) -- Tokyo Medical University admitted Tuesday that it had routinely tampered with entrance exam scores to limit the enrollment of female students and male students who had failed the exam a number of times before.
The university said at a press conference related to the matter that it will consider ways in which it can recompense students who failed the entrance exam due to its practice of deliberately deducting exam points from students it did not want to enroll.
It also said the practice, which has been inherent at the university for 12 years, will be "rooted out."
Keisuke Miyazawa, acting president of the university, said he plans to hold talks with the government on the possibility of accepting students retroactively if it was found that their examination scores had been tampered with.
Yoshimasa Hayashi, Japan's education minister, said that he will launch an immediate probe into all universities in Japan with a medical department to ensure such examination score tampering is not occurring.
One of the lawyers, who had been conducting an internal probe into the university's practice of tampering with examination results and allowing "backdoor" admissions to some students in return for favors, said the practice was discriminatory.
"The deduction of marks, which began in 2006 or earlier is nothing but discrimination against women," the lawyer was quoted as saying.
An investigative report by the lawyers also highlighted the fact that the university's former Chairmen Masahiko Usui and former President Mamoru Suzuki were indicted last month by Tokyo prosecutors on bribery charges related to the son of a former education ministry bureau chief being admitted to the school with a padded exam score in exchange for favoritism related to a government subsidy program.
The lawyers' report also revealed that executives also padded the scores of some applicants of former graduates so the university could commandeer more donations from their parents.
The lawyers also attested that all entrance examination scores for women were deducted, as ordered by Usui and with the knowledge of Suzuki and another senior official at another renown university, to prevent a shortage of doctors at the university's affiliated hospitals.
The medical college reportedly believe that female doctors are more likely to resign or take extended leaves of absence after marrying and giving birth and wanted to keep its ratio of women studying at the university at around 30 percent, with only specific applicants allowed to pass its entrance exam.
Sources close to the matter have also revealed that the university was opposed to accepting male applicants who had failed the entrance test multiple times before because they also have a tendency to fail the national exam to become licensed medical practitioners.
This, the university believed, would drag down the university's overall ratio of successful applicants and dent its reputation.
The sources also said that there were examination invigilators at the university that used a specific manual to guide the process of manipulating students' points to control the enrollment process.
The university's admission of discriminatory practices has drawn a harsh backlash from the medical community in Japan including representatives from the the Japan Joint Association of Medical Professional Women and the Japan Medical Women's Association.
